He made a move as if to strike him dead, and then a sudden thought checked him. “Bah!” he ejaculated, “soil my sword with the blood of such vermin? I am a fool. Where is the girl?” he added fiercely. “_Pardieu_, I will wring your neck!” “I do not know where she is,” replied le Bossu, truthfully enough, for he did not know where they were then. “And you led us here to cheat us, slave?” said de Baudri. “A fine scheme--as you will learn to your cost. If I thought you knew where she was, I’d torture it out of you with hot irons.” The cobbler did not look at him; his brown eyes dwelt on the distance, and his soul was uplifted by the approaching joy of self-sacrifice. He did not hear the abuse that M. de Baudri continued to pour upon him; his life was passing before his eyes, his wretched, abused childhood, his sharp mortification over his physical infirmity, his silent, intense longing for friendship and love, his despised solitude, his hard, thankless labor; and now it was over, and not in vain! “Mother of God,” he prayed, “comfort the wretched.” He awoke to hear M. de Baudri ordering his soldiers to bring a rope. A dragoon went for a piece that was coiled on the back of one of the horses. The troopers never hunted heretics without rope. He returned promptly, and approaching le Bossu was slipping the noose over his head, but another scheme had occurred to the leader. “Hang him by the feet,” he said coolly, pointing with his white hand to a tree. “_Sacrebleu!_ ’twill hurt more so.” They secured the rope about the hunchback’s feet while their victim watched them with calm eyes. “What matter,” he thought, “if I have saved her? May the _bon Dieu_ make my sacrifice complete!” De Baudri watched him coolly, wondering that the rapt face was so calm. “When I give the order,” he said to the soldiers, “haul him up and let him hang twenty minutes. Now, rogue, where is the girl?” No answer; the clear eyes looked straight toward the setting sun, over the beautiful valley of the Vaunage. The radiance of the west fell on his face, as though he looked through those golden gates into Paradise. “_Nom de St. Denis!_” ejaculated de Baudri, “what a stubborn fool. Now, my men!” He raised his hand carelessly and the cripple was drawn up by the feet to the limb of a tree, his head hanging with the face to the west. Ten minutes passed--twenty. “Fire!” said M. de Baudri. There was the crash of a volley, the blue smoke rose, the poor, misshapen body swung around in the red sunlight, and there was silence,--broken at last by the trample of horses as the troopers mounted and rode down the hill. The sun set in a sea of gold; the gray clouds above turned the color of a red rose; a haze floated over Nîmes. In the wood, only the dead leaves rustled as they fell. In the upper room of the shop of Two Shoes, the candle before the shrine had burned down to the very end. It flickered and flared up, a single flame in the gloom, and then it went out forever.